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One cool thing we did on New Year's
Eve was to attend a performance of Seldom Scene (along with two other groups) at The Birchmere in Alexandria, VA. I know less about bluegrass than almost any other form of music. But I really enjoyed this event.Any bluegrass fans out there? If so, who else should I listen to? What separates bluegrass from country? I know it's a lot about strings, one strange one called a dobro-or something like that--which is held on its side. I know it comes from the Scottish-Irish tradition. What else?
27 comments:
Patti, try going online to Bluegrass Country, a good mix of old, new, classic and gospel. And isn't The Birchmere a cool venue?
It was so cool. And the food was great, which I didn't expect. Thanks!
Doc Watson (though his work is more properly a mixture largely focused on "old time" acoustic country music, but very bluegrass adjacent), Blue Rose (the first, i think, all-woman bluegrass "supergroup"), Uncle Earl (a younger all-woman group, paying nominal tribute to Earl Scruggs), Flatt and Scruggs and Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, David Grisman (his "dawg music" is even more self-consciously jazzy than other bluegrass...his band Old and In the Way with Jerry Garcia and several others was the subject of a documentary I caught a bit of on Starz this morning, GRATEFUL DAWG).
Jerry House's suggestion is a good one...another coincidence is that I was already listening to WAMU online, to the vintage radio drama package THE BIG BROADCAST, when I checked your blog. http://wamu.org/ for their Bluegrass Country feed, which they broadcast digitally in DC (up through the '90s, they had a largely split format between bluegrass and related folk/acoustic and talk/NPR news on their analog signal).
Bluegrass is more improvisational than most other country music, and split off from commercial country as that form became more urban (amusingly enough) and poppish in the '40s, with Bill Monroe as the primary instigator,
WAMU was broadcasting the show across the world right next to our table. Very nice people too.
The one time I managed to get to the Birchmere (even though I was a fan of the Seldom Scene before I moved to DC, from a fellow DJ turning me onto them at KTUH in Honolulu), Donna and I saw Doc Watson and his band...they moved us three times, but the last move put us in front of stage center and they tore up our tab. Glad to read they're still doing good work.
A dobro, or steel guitar, being also a major instrument of Hawaiian music...HAWAII CALLS was a staple of the country/bluegrass stations of my father's youth, and there's no little crossover in those musical scenes (even though by the time I left Hawaii in the '80s, "Jawaiian"--Hawaiian-reggae fusion--was making Big inroads).
The only time I dip into Bluegrass is for Alison Krauss. She's an incredibly gifted singer.
She's pretty amazing, David.
Blue grass? Sounds like Boise State.
sorry.....
I don't listen to much bluegrass (though I enjoy it when i do), but I do love The Birchmere. One of the best concert venues I've ever been to. Tower of Power, Delbert McClinton, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy all sounded great there.
Imho you can't go wrong with the godfather/king of blugrass, Bill Monroe. And the Stanley Brothers. And though she's more of a hybrid than pure blugrass I'm major fan of Alison Kraus. And apparently so is Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant-- he & Ms. Kraus got together and made a pretty damn decent [and very interesting] disc last year.
John McAuley
Just went to the library and got a ton of music with all these names. Now I will find out if it was the atmosphere at The Birchmere or the music itself I liked. Sometimes I am fooled. I am sometime a fickle enthusiast.
An addendum regarding Bill Monroe. In '82or '83 he gave a free concert in downtown Flint. The only bluegrass tunes I knew back then were Foggy Mountain Breakdown from Bonnie And Clyde and the opening & closing themes from The Beverly Hillbillies. Of the hundreds of concerts I've attended Bill Monroe's is still one of the most memorable. Even though I wasn't very familiar with his style of music I knew by the third tune I was watching a master craftsman/artist at work.
John McAuley
Well, the Seldom Scene are pretty damned good, even among the legendary bluegrass bands, and more accessible than most bluegrass artists to the new listener.
But so are most of the artists cited so far.
I had a brother-in-law who was an excellent local bluegrass musician. When he was very quickly dying (at about age 63) of brain cancer, we walked in on him in his nursing home room one day. He had on headphones, was listening to Alison Krauss, and crying. He was saying goodbye.
Damn that was a hard one to read, Joe. So sorry but glad he went out like he lived.
Patti, you might try some of Ricky Skaggs' albums from the 1980s. He's a very talented musician with the proper bluegrass feel.
Thanks, Mike. The name is familiar but I thought he was country.
Skaggs is a country artist, but like many of them has a heart in bluegrass and usually prefers to play bluegrass-flavored country music. No great wall of separation, after all (see the characterization of Doc Watson, who has been hugely influential on bluegrass w/o being primarily a bg guy)...lotsa folks, including pop country acts like the Dixie Chicks or "New Acoustic Music" folks such as the Turtle Island String Quartet, who have roots in bluegrass, play in that mode some of the time. Another excellent bluegrass band, Hot Rize, have a collective alter ego as the intensely retro honkytonk/western swing band Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers (they were among the acts at a Wolf Trap blowout I attended).
Make that "had"...Rize and the Trailblazers are broken up.
I dig some BG every once and a while. Last year I discovered a band called The Devil Makes Three who area a more edgy bluegrass outfit.
see, there you go...at the birchmere. i could have so hooked you guys up.
bluegrass. meh.
saw dick dale there though.
There's a little dive bar in Falls Church, VA called JV's where different local bands play bluegrass on Sundays. It's light years from the Birchmere in every respect but it's been around for over 60 years. I recommend it if that's your sort of thing. As for good bluegrass bands, one I like is The Kentucky Colonels. Their Appalachian Swing album is pretty good.
Heres’s a bio of Bill Monroe, long considered the father of bluegrass
To me the Blue Grass is more people oriented. In the hill country neighbors get together and play music on the front porch of the country store. Them that don’t play gat the lawn chairs out and sit and talk. It is best experienced this way not at stage shows and fairs.
Unfortunately I was just a visitor to the VA area. If you can find me a spot in Michigan, I'm there.
Unfortunately I was just a visitor to the VA area. If you can find me a spot in Michigan, I'm there.
Unfortunately I was just a visitor to the VA area. If you can find me a spot in Michigan, I'm there.
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